Clear insight

Blogs 6 April, 2023

How the Validation Agent role can help bring greater transparency, trust and confidence to the Middle East and Africa

In November 2022, Diligencia was appointed by GLEIF – the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation – as a Validation Agent to verify entity data required as part of the LEI application process. To help promote the use of LEIs...

Blogs 10 January, 2023

The Middle East & Africa to take centre stage in 2023

As the 2022 calendar heads for the recycling bin, it is worth reflecting on the three major global events that were held in the MEA region in the last quarter of the year: in October, the Future Investment Initiative (FII, or...

Blogs 7 December, 2022

Identity with Clarity: the factors driving growth in the global adoption of LEI

Earlier this year the Global LEI Foundation announced that over 2 million active LEIs are now in circulation, a significant milestone in the worldwide adoption of the transparency initiative first introduced by the G20 and the...

Blogs, Sport 11 May, 2022

The PIF and LIV Golf — lessons on how to challenge the established order of world sport

Breakaway sporting competitions are almost as old as professional sport itself. Ever since 21 northern English rugby clubs set up their own League in 1895 over a row about wanting to pay their players, two codes of rugby have...

Blogs, Sport 17 March, 2022

Soft power and the unstoppable rise of sport in the Middle East

If any doubts remained about the link between geopolitics and international sport, then the recent reaction of global sporting bodies to the Russia-Ukraine conflict has surely dispelled them....

Blogs, Sport 17 March, 2022

Bids for Chelsea FC: who are the ‘Saudi Media Group’?

Roman Abramovich’s decision to put Chelsea Football Club up for sale (shortly before he was sanctioned by the UK government for his links to Russian president Vladimir Putin) has already attracted a number of potential buyers....

Blogs 4 January, 2022

Resolutions for 2022: Keep good company

While I generally try to avoid making ill-fated predictions and resolutions at this time of year, there are times when a passing comment or suggestion seems to put a new complexion on, and even set the tone for, the 12 months...

Blogs, Infrastructure 7 December, 2021

Building a state within a State: NEOM and the new future of Saudi Arabia

Anyone who has lived and worked in the Gulf is probably accustomed to seeing new roads, buildings, sometimes whole cities erupt from the desert landscape in staggeringly short periods of time. Ambitious new infrastructure...

Blogs 4 July, 2021

Wirecard and the dangers of weaponising corporate intelligence

During a recent ACAMS panel discussion on the Wirecard fraud, a central theme emerged of just how many people maintained a collective belief that the digital payments company was a spectacular success story. Perhaps most notably,...

Blogs, Healthcare 14 June, 2021

The Jab Market – Covid vaccines and the private sector in the MEA region

During the Covid pandemic many countries have seen private sector organisations lending their support to address the crisis. From alcohol companies switching to make hand sanitiser, to manufacturing companies re-tooling...

Blogs 23 March, 2021

The UAE’s new Trust Law – keeping family wealth at home

Last month the UAE’s Ministry of Finance announced a new law that allows capital and assets to be transferred into onshore trusts. According to the ministry’s spokesman the new legislation is designed to support the wealth...

Blogs 11 January, 2021

The Qatar reconciliation and what it tells us about 2021

It is customary at this time of year for thinktanks, political commentators and risk consultancies to deliver their forecasts for the year ahead – partly to fill what can be a quiet time for the news cycle. Not so this year with...

Blogs 17 December, 2019

Saudi Aramco: where ambition meets clarity – Diligencia’s year in review

As I write, financial newspapers are leading with the news that Saudi Aramco has on the second day of public trading briefly achieved a valuation of US$2 trillion. This is the culmination of a two-year story since the IPO...

Blogs 22 August, 2019

We are all storytellers

OK so it has taken me a while, but I have finally found the time over the summer to read the excellent ‘Sapiens’ by Yuval Noah Hariri – a masterful sweep of human history, mixing anthropology, sociology and good old-fashioned...

Blogs 31 July, 2019

Boom or bust? What is really going on with Egypt’s economy?

“Egypt’s economy isn’t booming…it’s collapsing” says a former minister in Mohammed Morsi’s short-lived administration....

Blogs 18 January, 2018

The Saudi corruption purge in 5 charts and tables

Mohammed bin Salman’s crackdown on corruption briefly reappeared on the radar of international media outlets this week with the news that Prince Muteb bin Abdullah, previously head of the Saudi national guard, had been released...